TODD SCHORR

By Steven Cerio

TODD SCHORR has been adrift on the high seas of art for more than twenty years. While fighting off the scent of fish and unwashed mermaids Schorr has managed to balance both a painting and an illustration career, creating work for advertising agencies campaigns, record companies, magazine publishers are products of animated television commercials. For Paper Moon Graphics Schorr created dozens of greeting card designs and his own line of paper facemasks called “Face Lifts”. Under less-than-ideal conditions he created close to thirty covers for Time magazine, of which only eight have been published – lay no blame on Mr. Schorr but instead on the magazine’s hideous corporate agendas. And in less testing days, he produced the illustrations for the Bette Midler’s book The Saga Of Baby Divine.

            Restless for change and distance from the toothy world of illustration, Todd moved to picket-fenced Roxbury, Connecticut with his wife Kathy (also a painter and illustrator) in 1985. Having successfully shifted his weight from the ad agency halls to the gallery walls, Schorr shows extensively in the States, Europe and Japan. His work, ranging from the illustrative to the hauntingly cryptic, reveals deep pods of Pop Culture with nematodes, choppers, bosom babes, toys and dragsters suspended in a stagnant soup like fruit in a jello mold.

            Hailing from the state that’s the center of East Coast auto culture, Schorr pays homage to his New Jersey roots. He wildly splatters Hot Rod hieroglyphics across his canvasses. Chrome and spinning wheels are drafted with a prowess almost demeaning to reality in their unworldly slickness. Stewing a slathering of iconographic toys and Pop-poop smears recalling an era prior to the invention of plastic, Schorrs’s work has been informed by a lifetime of squats before the holy boob tube and countless sticky expeditions to the bottom of Lucky Charms boxes.

            His work reflects the vision of a society gone mad for instantaneous amusement, in which intelligence, empathy and religion play second fiddle to the new McDonalds Happy Meal toy. Schorr

Worships our kitschy America in all of its vacuous grandeur, preferring to sloth around in its Kool Aid-scented goop rather than adopt the prescribed self-righteous indignations of super-hipster.

            Schorr showed his new work on the 1997 Lollapalooza tour, and a new book compiling more than a hundred paintings entitled Secret Mystic Rites – The Art Of Todd Schorr is being released by the great Ron Turner’s Last Gasp Publications.

SECONDS: I see a monster movie mentality running through your work. Do you still spend a lot of time watching television?

SCHORR: That’s basically childhood influences. Sure, I still like to watch old films but it’s not something I’m preoccupied with. The main influence throughout my work would be the illustrators of the Golden Age. Most of them dealt in fantasy imagery – M.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell. Their techniques really had a major impact on me. The great illustrators this country produced are some of the best artists that ever were.

            I don’t understand why so many critics in the panting world have no regard for figurative art. Whether they’re putting down comic books or illustration, they keep using it as a negative. These critics are not artists themselves; all they know is intellectual concepts they’ve learned out of books. They’ve never had the hands-on skill required to actually compose a painting. They don’t understand how an artist can look at staid old academy paintings from the 1800s and love the way skin tones are painted. That’s much more interesting than looking at a canvas with a big fucking yellow square on it! Art really is in the eye of the beholder and to each his own.

SECONDS: I see a bit of Dali in your work too.

SCHORR: Salvador Dali is also a real big influence. My parents used to belong to this gallery and once in a while they’d take me to shows. I was about eight, nine years old and they had a big Dali show. It really made a tremendous impact. It seemed cartoon-like but it provoked a lot of anxiety in me. I kept coming back to it.

SECONDS: What do you think of him now? When I was a kid, I felt the same way as you. I liked the fact that I had no idea what he was painting about.

SCHORR: I think his most productive, most imaginative period – from the late Twenties into the early Forties – still holds up. He just became of victim of his own fame.

SECONDS: He became the Ronald McDonald of Surrealism.

SCHORR: He got so deluded and clownish towards the end. A couple of years ago they had a show of his early work at the Museum Of Modern Art and it was great. In the catalog, they were saying it was to reassess him and forget about all the TV ads and the other shit he did and examine these amazing paintings he did in the context of the time that they were done in.

SECONDS: He seemed to be more about his lifestyle than his art after a certain point.

SCHORR: For myself, it’s difficult to relate to that. I’m kind of – just a regular boring person. I find it difficult to get into a bullshit routine and a lot of artists can really pull that off. Dali was good at it. He could certainly follow it up with great work but again, towards the end it had a detrimental effect on his work. He was so distracted by this persona that he had invented. I can’t see how you can devote that much energy to your lifestyle and still have the energy to be serious about the painting you’re doing. The kind of stuff he was doing originally was very labor-intensive. Towards the end when he was doing his big paintings, a bunch of people were practically painting all those things for him. I know artists have always had assistants from the beginning of time but I don’t know, if a guy didn’t do it himself …

SECONDS: It becomes about the money and being recognized on the street. He didn’t want to spend any time in the studio anymore. Is that something you fear, burning out and not wanting to work anymore?

SCHORR: It’s hard to say. I’ve certainly thought about it. I’m sure every artist does. You always think, “What if I can’t think of anything else?”

            There’s so many things you can pull from. I’m always getting into something interesting that spark ides. If you sit by yourself in one room with nothing for twenty-five years, you might get stagnant. There’s some artists that have such truly unbelievable imaginations they can invent things straight out of their minds. Some of the better primitive artists don’t have any formal art education and aren’t aware of all the different art movements. They pull it out of their head without any outside stimulation.

            I’m a product of Pop Culture and media bombardment. I’ve always been plugged into what’s going on in both music and art.

SECONDS: You consider yourself a very normal guy, then?

SCHORR: I always hear artists saying that. I’ve heard Robert Williams say the same thing. Most people perceive themselves as being normal, which means you’re well adjusted and functioning within society. Like I don’t consider myself as part of the criminal element.

SECONDS: I don’t see you posing with guns and a big cigar like most of the people in this “Alternative Art” genre.

SCHORR: I don’t know what those guys were like when they were little kids but to me, it seems it’s maybe affected toughness. Everybody’s trying to be a badass these days. I hate affections as much as anybody. Essentially you’re talking about middle-class White kids who grew up in suburbia. Every little town you go to, you see all these homeboys hanging around. They have as much urban moxey as I did when I was growing up in New Jersey. It’s ridiculous – “Yo yo, what’s up?” – what the hell are you talking about? Go live in Spanish Harlem for a couple of years. It’s such horseshit, and with artists it’s the same thing. A lot of these people are trying to gain acceptance and if you don’t feel secure with the work you’re doing, you throw a bullshit persona in it. There’s certainly been artistic geniuses that have had unusual personalities – but they backed it up with real genius.

SECONDS: Showmanship is big in art.

SCHORR: The media loves that. They want to get an act along with the content. There is no content anymore. Everything’s about attitude. There’s thousands of artists who quietly toil away doing unbelievable things without showing off, and I find something noble in that.

SECONDS: There’s a lot of aggression in your work. What is it about aggression that appeals to you?

SCHORR: There’s an attraction to violence, to a degree. It’s an instinctual thing to human beings, same as watching a sporting event or something. I’m fairly aggressive. Growing up, I had my share of fights, you know? I don’t do decapitated heads and blood flowing but there’s an aggressiveness to the compositions.

SECONDS: Most people’s art is usually the exact opposite of the way they are internally. How do you feel about that theory?

SCHORR: With my work there is an element of aggression and violence, but it’s also tempered with humor. If you hung around with me, you’d pick that up.

SECONDS: I don’t see humor in your work, I see sarcasm.

SCHORR: You could say that. There’s certain pieces I’ve done that are just out-and-out goofy and then there’s stuff that is more sarcastic.

SECONDS: A lot of it is a sinister take on American culture. Is that intentional?

SCHORR: In general my attitude towards society is taking it with a sense of humor but I’m aware of what goes on beneath the surface. So much in society is not what it seems. There a lot of sinister things going on. Certain things from our past just appeal to me. I really like things from the turn of century up through 1940. There’s just something about that period, when the Industrial Revolution kicked in and mass produced items came along – there was a quality and craftsmanship with everything.

            I collect old sporting equipment, like old leather football helmets. You’d think, “What the fuck are you into that stuff for?” but there’s something about the textures, the kind of archaic nature of it. It has a certain charm and quaintness.

SECONDS: Is the “charm” a historical thing cast upon it by the kind of things see on Leave It To Beaver?

SCHORR: Everything’s shaded with romance. First of all, I wouldn’t want to be living at the turn of the century. You don’t want to go back and deal with the day-to-day aspects of any of those periods because there’s been so many advances since then. It’s definitely a romance. You look at it through the soft gauze of nostalgia. I’m talking in terms of the aesthetic appeal of objects themselves.

            Industrial design really appeals to me. Everything is too disposable nowadays. They don’t build things to be held on to for fifty years …

SECONDS: In fifty years, artists are going to be collecting stuff from the 1990s.

SCHORR: Oh sure. I see the seventies stuff coming back in, and I think, “Who the hell wants to bring back that crap?” I’m seeing things I went through. The generations that came in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies seemed too preoccupied with popular culture. My parents don’t want anything old. Most older people want everything new; they’re always throwing out all their old shit. They don’t want to be reminded. It seems that so many people I know are going to flea markets and picking up old doodads from thirty years ago.

            Again, mass-produced items didn’t come into being until the 1800s, which is fairly recent history. Until then, everything was handmade. There was no time to make doodads. There was nothing to collect unless you were a rich king and you collected rare instruments of war. If you look at any painting by the old masters, they only painted what was in their towns at the time. They didn’t have magazines!

            Artists using popular culture today, I don’t see any difference between that and what used to be called “genre painting.” It’s all about everyday American life as we have lived it.

SECONDS: Do you believe in chaos?

SCHORR: It’s bubbling beneath the surface twenty-four hours a day. Any minute the lid can blow off. A lot of people disenfranchised from society and anything could happen at any time.

SECONDS: Do you obsess about that?

SCHORR: I don’t obsess over it. For the most part, I like having fun. I like laughing and screwing around. I don’t dwell on negativity.

SECONDS: You’re more interested in joy than discomfort.

SCHORR: Definitely, but I’m a real cynic about things. What’s the old cliché? “Beneath the surface of most cynics is sentimental slob.” I’d be the first to get choked up over some stupid pet movie.

            One thing that annoys me about society is how people have no respect for one another. It’s all this in-your-face attitude. “Out of my way, I’m number one.” The kind of bozos shoving themselves in front of you with no guilt – this carries over into everything. That’s why you’ve go big corporate leaders stuffing their pockets with everybody’s money. It’s just greed. With hardly and major wars going on, where does this aggression come from?

SECONDS: Give us a brief history of your work.

SCHORR: I started illustrating around 1974-75. I met my wife Kathy going to school and when I graduated we moved up to Manhattan. When we first started out being illustrators, there were a lot of opportunities and creative things to illustrate. By the time we left New York in 1985, it was getting constrictive. Art directors didn’t have much power; art buyers had more to say. It was decision by committee and half-baked lame ideas over and over again. I said, “I can’t take it anymore. Let’s just start painting for ourselves and see what happens.” So for about eight, nine years we were juggling paintings and commercial work because we didn’t have an outlet for the paintings yet. Slowly, we started getting into group shows and then I started doing one-person shows.

SECONDS: What are the proportions of your mental work to they physical work?

SCHORR: I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. The type of work I do, there’s definitely a love of the technical aspect but planning out the ideas is half the painting.

SECONDS: How about time-wise?

SCHORR: I spend a lot of time preparing the thing. I’m not a spontaneous artist. I can’t sit in front of blank canvas and just go to town. I design the whole thing with tracing paper, refining until I work out all the kinks. By the time I paint, I don’t want to be thinking about correcting things and changing perspectives. I like to have a good groundwork so I can just paint and think about color, volume and shape. An average painting that’s thirty by forty inches takes about two-and-a-half to three weeks to paint. I probably put in two weeks of preparation work.

SECONDS: Do you have a hard time maintaining your interest?

SCHORR: Yeah. When I go past three weeks of painting, it starts to get a little tedious. I see it finished in my mind. You get to a point where you put yourself on automatic pilot and finish it up.

SECONDS: You don’t seem to reveal yourself much in your paintings.

SCHORR: There’s bits and pieces of things in there but I’m never heavy-handed about it. I don’t like artwork like that. There’s a fine line between preachiness and something visually interesting that’s saying something. One thing I’ve been trying to do more and more is get away from the story-telling. I feel my paintings have to have a beginning, middle and end but I’m trying to work on being more random in my thought process and choice of imagery so that I can create a mystery for myself. I’ve tried doing things that are really loose and there’s no satisfaction in that for me, either. I still appreciate paintings with the rendering and the volume.

SECONDS: Do you ever get any ideas you don’t follow up on because they don’t fit the trip you’re on at the time?

SCHORR: I’d love to do a painting of a football game from the 1920s that looked as if it were painted by one of the academy painters from the 1800s.

SECONDS: Is there any drug culture references in your work? There seems to be a psychedelic awareness –

SCHORR: Yeah, growing up in the Sixties – I’ve had a real big musical influence. Growing up, more important than painting was playing the drums. I started playing the drums when I was in the third grade. I was in tons of bands and that was a great attention-getting device. It was much better than painting by yourself in a room. [laughs] Even today, if I see an old drum catalog from the Thirties or Forties I pick it up. I love music.

SECONDS: What drummers have influenced you?

SCHORR: Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich and later on, Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell.

SECONDS: Do you like what’s going on in music right now?

SCHORR: Lately, we’ve been listening to a lot of Techno. The Orb, Future Sound Of London – it’s real good background music for when you’re working. It’s good atmosphere. Before music, there was something else that you asked me …

SECONDS: I wanted to ask about drug culture.

SCHORR: Being in bands, I had exposure to that stuff but I was one of those people that never got that far into it. Nothing serious. I took Acid once and that was enough for me. Other than smoking Marijuana, the only thing I did was drink a lot. The things I don’t like about drugs – and this probably has a lot to say about my personality – is being out of control. When you’ve got a hyperactive mind to begin with, that’s the last thing I needed. The same with Cocaine. As I later found out, I’ve got a heart problem so trying that was a real bad move. With Cocaine, I felt a loss of control. With drinking, I had more control. These days I don’t do anything. I’ve got a heart valve problem, so I don’t drink. But I do say I miss it.

SECONDS: Do you hope to be remembered two hundred years from now?

SCHORR: If anything, my artwork is a product of its time. Two hundred years from now, it’s going to seem very interesting historically. The people that have bought my work spend their hard-earned money –it’s not like the paintings I do are ten dollars apiece – they spend a good chunk of their money to buy these things and once they die maybe some of them will get thrown out, but I think a lot of the paintings will pass from generation to generation. Someone will say, “I don’t get this fucking thing but my father said this guy was supposed to be a good artist. I guess we ought to keep it around.”